Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.: Speechesarchives.nd.edu/Hesburgh/CPHS143-01-06.pdf · women's...
Transcript of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.: Speechesarchives.nd.edu/Hesburgh/CPHS143-01-06.pdf · women's...
CIVIL RIGHrS AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. President, University of Notre Dame
During recent years, I have been severely critized for being
forthrightly and enthusiastically in favor of the Equal Rights Amend-
ment. It has been alleged that this puts me on the side of those who
are destroying womanhood in America. I guess that the truth of the
matter depends on what womanhood in America is perceived to be, either
ideally or realistically. I am happy to declare myself on that point,
and will do so presently.
When asked to defend my support of ERA, I simply say that the
whole history of America has been the story of the enlargement of justice
for everyone. ERA is a part of that development, long overdue. All
during the Bicentennial Year, we heard the stirring words of the Declaration:
''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal
and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Great words, but too o~en we were not reminded that the Declaration ..
merely declared these rights, it did not effect them. In fact, when the
words were written in 1776, and even when to establish justice and to
secure these rights, the Constitution was written in 1789, those great
human rights were fully enjoyed by only affluent, mature, free, Anglo-
Saxon males. The most fundamental political right, voting, was not
enjoyed by women in America until this century by amendment of the
Constitution in 1920. Must one say that this is the result of prejudice?
I would simply say, yes, prejudice and all of its associated ills,
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especially stereotyping: ''women are weak;" "women are unstable and
irrational;" ~women shouldn't mix in politics," "woman's place is
in the home, not the political arena," "all women will simply vote
like their husbands;" etc.
One could argue that the enjoyment of the full panoply of human
rights for women would follow the right to vote. One might just as
well claim that the blacks' problem of rights was solved by the passage
of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments following the Civil War. We
still needed, about a century later, the omnibus Civil Rights Act of
1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Housing Act of 1968.
Even now, the problem of basic human rights for blacks is far from a
full solution. The same might be said for women. Their struggle for
equality is a long, arduous, uphill battle.
Inequality for women is an ancient tale. Ittook a woman, Dr.
Rivkah Harris of Northwestern University, to point out recently that
of the 185 scribes in the Babylonian city of Sippar, between 1850 and
1550 B.C., only ten were women. Scribes at that time happened to be
highly honored professional people in a sea of illiteracy. They
required long years of education. All that one needed to qualify
was intelligence and manual dexterity for writing complicated cuneiform
characters on clay tablets. It is not surprising that although many
women are endowed with high intelligence and manual dexterity, a great
preponderance of men were chosen for the honored positions, even that
long ago. Prejudice, the enemy of equality and equal rights among men
and women, has deep roots in history. Nothing that deeply rooted will
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be easily eradicated from the minds and hearts and attitudes of mankind.
11All men are created equal." Men have tended to take that statement to
mean literally and univocally "all men."
One does not have to go back in history 3500 years to demonstrate
the necessity of concerted effort and cumulative legislation to balance
a situation that is still completely out of balance today. However one
views the women's movement today, a close look at the actual situation
in America should persuade even the most prejudiced that women are
discriminated against in many ways. The record speaks for itself.
Women may, in fact, need a much more effective women's movement than
they have if they are to enjoy equality of opportunity in the foresee
able fUture. Also, a few men should join the movement, for undoubtedly,
prejudice comes mainly from the male side. Look at a few facts which I
have extracted from a 362-page report to President Ford by the National
Connnission on the Observance of International Women's Year. The facts
are striking. These are only a few of them.
Thirty-seven million American women work outside the home. White
women's median earnings are $6,823, while the comparable figure for white
males is $12,lo4. The black woman faces a double prejudice in achieving
equality and justice. Black women receive a median salary of $6,258
compared to $8,524 for black men.
In elementary and secondary education, women represent 67S of
all teachers, but only 15S of women are principals in elementary schools
and only 3% of high schools have women principals.
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Six million women belong to labor unions, but are al.most
completely without a voice in the management of unions. A most
striking case is the International Ladies Garment Workers Union which
has one lady on its 23-member Board of Directors. One word for that
is tokenism; another is inequality.
Women make up 53, of the voting population in America, and
39% of the labor force. How many women hold elective government
positions? 5%! I spare you the percentage for lawyers, doctors,
scientists, and engineers.
There are 399 authorized judgeships in the United States District
Courts and 97 judges in the Federal Appeals Courts. Women judges in
these courts number ~, much less than 1%. In the 2CX) year history of
our country, only 10 women have been named to the federal bench, none
ever to the Supreme Court.
Jobs traditionally done by women are consistently undervalued
in the federal government's Dictionary of Occupational Titles, used
often to determine salary levels. For example, dog trainers are rated
higher than foster mothers! Paraprofessional jobs in education, health,
and welfare are classified menial because they are generally perfonned
by women.
Need I say more? It is not so much that this represents monumental
injustice towards women, but it has a deleterious effect on the self
image, motivation, and hopes of young women who cannot expect equal
opportunity or recompense, despite equal intelligence and education,
not to mention equal or superior perfonnance. In addition, the nation
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itself is deprived of much creativity and intelligence. This is a
continuing and cumulative inpoverishment that we can ill afford in
America. To make the picture even more dismal, America would look
like a paradise for women compared to most of the world beyond our
shores. However, that does not justify our delay in living up to
the promises of our Declaration and Constitution, even if we have to
amend the Constitution to speed up the process.
The situation of women in America may be one of the best reasons
for reviewing the whole effort towards achieving civil rights in our
day. I have been reasonably quiet on the subject since my quick
dismissal by President Nixon in 1972 immediately following his re
election. I had spent 15 years on the Conmission on Civil Rights
since its inception in 1957, the last four years as Chairman. Those
were golden years when America in the sixties completely reversed the
mores and practices that had humiliated blacks since the first days
of slavery in our country. Enonnous progress was made in establishing
equality of access in public accommodations, practically eliminating
apartheid overnight with the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
There was also an impressive breakthrough on voting with the
1965 law. Within a few years, we went from a handf'ul to thousands
of elected black officials, including many members of Congress and the
Mayors of some of our largest cities across the nation, Washington,
Newark, Detroit, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. There was also a massive
enlargement of equality of opportunity for blacks in that concatenated
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problematic trilogy of education, employment, and housing, the latter
thanks largely to the federal law of 1968, which had been filibustered
to death a year earlier.
While all of this was happening to blacks, our largest minority,
numbering more than all the Canadians in Canada, we of the Civil Rights
Commission were concerned that forward progress was far slower on all
fronts for Spanish-speaking Americans, mainly Mexican-Americans and
Puerto Ricans, and, of course, almost no progress for native Americans.
As we began to intensify our efforts on both of these other fronts in
the late sixties and early seventies, the women's movement began in
earnest -- there had long been a quieter one -- and we suddenly realized
that women were not specifically included in our legislative mandate
which only cited "race, religion, color, and national origin," the
standard legal list of concerns for unequal protection of the laws in
America.
There was mounted a new and concerted effort on the part of the
women's movement, in which we concurred and with which we collaborated
enthusiastically. As a result, the basic 1957 law creating the Commission
on Civil Rights was amended in the early seventies to read: "race,
religion, color, national origin, and~·" There was some resistance,
for some thought that our new involvement with the women's movement
would dilute our efforts for the standard minorities. I said at the
time, and I still believe it, that the problem of equal rights for
women, at least white women, would eventually be easier to solve than
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the problems relating to prejudice on account of color. Even so, one
cannot be selective in fighting injustice. One must be against
injustice wherever and whenever it is encountered. Justice, like
truth and freedom, is indivisible. When one person suffers injustice,
we should all suffer.
All of this leads me to two broader observations. First, I
think that the time has come, even for the women's movement, to drop
the term "civil rights" in favor of the broader and more comprehensive
term "human rights." It is a curious development that the Western
world of Europe and America has tended to emphasize, in its political
documents, civil and political rights,while the Socialist countries
have spoken more frequently of economic, social, and cultural rights.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations
was reduced to political protocols for approval by governments,there
were two of them, following this same division of political and civil
rights in the one document and economic and social rights in the
other.
I believe that we in America have come far enough in our recent
developments to speak now of the whole panoply of rights; political,
civil, economic, social, cultural, religious, educational -- all of
which would be contained in the one expression "human rights," now
recognized worldwide at least in principle, following the almost
universal acceptance of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
Moreover, it seems to me that this larger expression is a felicitous
elaboration of that wonderf'ul statement in our Declaration of Independence,
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"the pursuit of happiness." It is unthinkable that one could honestly
pursue happiness, or human f'ulfillment, in modern America without enjoy
ing the whole spectrum of what might best be called human rights.
My second observation is that we in America can no longer just
think of our own pursuit of happiness. Somehow our concern for human
rights here in America must be linked to the same concern for human
dignity and human rights everywhere. I would, of course, say the same
for the concerns of the women's movement,here and abroad. The striving
for women's rights should be worldwide, for as noted above, whatever
our problems for equality of women in America, the problem is far worse
in most of the rest of the world.
When one looks at the sweep of problems facing us today, it is
quickly evident that the worst of them are necessarily worldwide and
interdependent in their understanding, as well as in their solution.
Ultimately, there are no purely national solutions for energy, hunger,
development, trade, terrorism, population, monetary systems, use of the
seas, environment, health, disarmament, peace, justice, and yes, human
rights, too.
In this increasingly interdependent world, our efforts must be
both national and international. We breathe the same air, we drink the
same water, we are each of us passengers on a single spaceship earth,
with finite irreplaceable life resources, with a common yearning for
peace and justice. I suspect that we will achieve our common hopes
together or not at all.
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Before abruptly departing from the Civil Rights Commission, I had
been urging my fellow Commissioners to consider renaming our work the
Commission on Human Rights and enlarging our purview to consider the
human rights implications of everything the United States does, not just
nationally, but worldwide. What, for example, are the implications of
a nation dedicated to and working for liberty and justice for all giving
preferential aid treatment and arms to repressive regimes that trample
on the human rights of their citizens, for example, in South Korea and
Chile?
Two hundred years ago, all the world was thrilled when a small
country of 3 million people spread thinly over l,~oo miles of Atlantic
coastline in thirteen very disparate colonies declared that all men were
created equal and that government was created to secure their rights and
that the government derived its just powers from the consent of the
governed. In fact, the world was never the same again, from the French
Revolution that followed soon a~er our Declaration, to the complete
freeing of a vast colonial world that has happened in our lifetime. If
I had one mandate for the women's movement today, it would be that they
take their inspiration from our beginnings and dedicate themselves to
making America today what Governor John Winthrop challenged the fledgling
Massachusetts Bay Colony to become, a good city set upon a hill, for all
the world to see.
I would hope that by now I have sufficiently established my
dedication to the best of the women's movement to be indulged a word
or two of criticism. It is no state secret that the passage of the
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ERA is presently in trouble. Even some states who have approved the
amendment are now attempting to retract their approval. What went
wrong? I think that somehow the women's movement, or at least its
leadership, went astray and, in doing so, estranged many women.
Curiously, most of the criticism I receive for supporting ERA comes
from women, not men. Wanen across the land are in the vanguard of
efforts to defeat ERA, which somehow has become entangled, for all the
wrong reasons, with abortion, lesbianism, masculinizing women, destroying
family stability, co-educational rest rooms, combat service in the Armed
Forces, etc.
Somehow, the whole essence of the movement, its deep meaning for
feminine equality and identity, its inherent justice and rightness, have
been lost in the process. My only advice is for women to get the whole
movement back on the tracks that are going somewhere that most women
want to go. I don't think that men can do it, even though they can and
should collaborate.
As a Christian theologian, I am o~en heartened by the way that
theology can point reality in the right direction when a good movement
falters. Just consider two ancient texts, one Jewish, another Christian.
They put the whole matter quite simply.
First, consider the story of creation in the opening chapter of
the Book of Genesis, which is one of the first great statements on the
relationship of men and women. It says that only in being men ~
women is mankind reflective of the image of God. No confusion here,
such as "all men are created equal," that we noted earlier. It even
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specifies the best reason for human dignity and equality, together
they reflect the image of God.
"God said, 'Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness
of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the seas, the
birds of the heavens, the cattle, all the wild beasts, and all the
reptiles that crawl upon the earth.' God created man in the image
of Himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he
created them." (Genesis, I - 26-7).
The good news that Christ, Our Lord, brought into the world
was magnificently proclaimed by St. Paul to a world that was split,
as ours is yet, between nations, free men and slaves, men and women.
Paul proclaimed that these distinctions were less important than the
basic oneness and unity of human beings, especially those who are one
in Christ, something transcending our basic human oneness.
"All baptized in Christ, you have clothed yourselves in Christ,
and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and
free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
(Galatians, 2: 27-8}
Despite the grandeur of these texts, two thousand five hundred
years have not sufficed to help us create a world that would reflect
realistically what they teach. In the Thirteenth Century, even a
great theologian like Thomas Aquinas could repeat the assertion of
the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who said that woman was a miscarried,
or incomplete, man. I often fight off discouragement by remembering a
conversation with the late French philosopher, Jacques Maritain, who
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said that mankind's history is a long uphill growth in moral discern
ment. Certainly, the women's movement moves us in that direction.
There is a very spectal energy in women, an energy seeking to be
liberated for good. As another Frenchman, the Jesuit anthropoligist
Teilhard de Chardin, said, "to limit energy," to allow the treasury
of feminine energy to be diluted or lost, "that is sin." Following
the inspiration of Genesis, Teilhard also says to us for women:
"Listen, it is God who awaits you in me." They too, are in a very
special way, God's image among us.
On that note, I would like to make a few personal observations
about the person and the life of Rosemary Park who has inspired all of
the contributors to this volume. I will try to relate what she is to
what I have been writing about.
First, it must be said that Rosemary is quintessentially a woman,
a lady. She brings me back where I began, namely what is womanhood in
America today. I cannot precisely detail all that this means, but
looking at Rosemary, I know what it is to be a woman, to be something
special that we men can never be. To be with her is to be specially
enriched in a most feminine way.
Best of all, she utterly destroys, just by being what she is,
all of the hackneyed stereotypes abcut women. She is highly intelligent
and superbly educated, both here and in 1'urope. She speaks with the
authority of one who has studied and read widely and knows exactly what
she is talking about. She not only knows what to say, but how to say
it well and clearly. Nothing weak or shy about her, she leads from
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the strength of a strong mind and deeply-held convictions. But she
does this in a very special way, not alienating people, but quietly
convincing them with sweet reason.
What comes through is her confident competence. She has had
an unusually rich professional experience in her varied lifelong tasks,
and she has learned from what she has seen and lived, as well as from
what she has read and studied.
There is not only a pleasant personality named Rosemary Park,
tut a woman of character, a lover of civilizing values, who lives what
she loves. You know if you are her good friend, but I suspect that
friendship with her depends largely on the kind of person you are. I
suspect that she would not suffer fools gladly, at least not moral
fools.
Because of her superb qualities, Rosemary Park has been called
upon to perform at the highest levels of higher education. I suspect
that her's has been a largely pioneering role, that of being the first
woman to do this or that important task. Because she always performed
so well, always essentially as a womanly woman, the requests multiplied
as the years passed. So her influence and her host of friends widened.
All of us learned, through her, that we had missed a great deal over
the years by not having more women like her to enrich our many associations.
To know and to work with Rosemary Park was to grow in respect for the
special leadership and creativity and insights that only a woman can
bring to a wide variety of tasks that all too long have been essential~Y
and solely performed only by men.
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All of us who worked closely together monthly for six years
on the Carnegie CoD111ission on Higher F.ducation were enriched by her
presence and bettered by her friendship. In almost every important
association, council, or commission for higher education, she made
her presence felt, her ideas accepted, and her leadership acknowledged.
When the University of Notre Dame decided to become coeducational
in 1972, it was obvious that we would onLY avoid serious difficulties
if we could enjoy the insights that only a talented woman educator
could provide us. Fortunately, Rosemary Park was the first woman
member of our Board of Trustees, but the first of many, so valuable
was her contribution. She had already served the University superbly
in providing us with a basic study of the problems and opportunities
involved in a possible merger with our sister institution, Saint Mary's
College. As our University Trustee, Rosemary quickly assumed chairman
ship of a most important Faculty Affairs Committee, again the only woman
among fellow Trustees and elected faculty members on that Committee.
Once more, she performed outstandingly in a variety of difficult situations
that simply could not have been equally handled by any man available.
She proved to us all that a professional woman is a great unifying force,
even among, perhaps especially among, embattled men.
What has all of this to do with the women's movement and human
rigbts? Certainly, women should not have to prove themselves any more
than men to achieve equality as human beings in human affairs. However,
this isA at times given the attitudes of our society, the only way that
a vicious circle of prejudice is broken. It is difficult to argue
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against a fact, especially the fact of demonstrated intelligence, wide-
spread competence, deep personal influence, and all of this demonstrated
while being quintessentially a woman.
Rosemary Park has done all of this, and more, for many years.
She has been a one person women's movement all by herself. She has
opened more doors than a battalion of noisy, abrasive, and unwomanly
women. In a recent discussion I attended, someone complained to Margaret
Mead that some women had perfonned well without much notice. Margaret
Mead responded with some acerbity, "But they didn't come through as
women. They don't even look like women!"
No one will ever say that of Rosemary Park. She is proud to be
a woman. She knows that a woman can do as a woman some very special
tasks in a very special way. She has no desire to be a man, even to be
competitive with men. She truly complements every man's group she joins. > • .-t
Her insights surprise them -- they had never thought of that, o~,quite
not that way. Her understanding, compassion, and sensitivity make most .. men look like Neanderthals. Her intelligence and learning have a
special edge that we men o~en need and lack.
Having said all of this, may I add that we who have been blessed
to work with her and love her cannot forget that special light in her
eyes, sometimes soft, but when needed, hard; that special smile that so
often dissolves opposition and welds affection. Thank God for Rosemary
Park and women like her. We have much to learn from all they can teach
us. My only problem with Rosemary is how can we possibly replace her
when she retires. I am sure that she will say, "There are a million
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Rosemarys out there. You fellows just have not been looking hard
enough." She will say it with such gaiety and cha:nn, that all of us
fellows will try to believe her, but all the time we will know in
our hearts that there is only one Rosemary Park. If there really
were millions, we would not need a women's movement. Maybe that
is the basic problem, and maybe as men, that is our fault.
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